That afternoon he escorted Jinny Jeffries and her uncle and aunt,
the Josiah Pendletons, to tea upon the little island in the Cairo
park, where white-robed Arabs brought them tea over the tiny bridge
and violins played behind the shrubbery and white swans glided upon
the blue lake, and then he carried them off in a victoria to view
the sunset from the Citadel heights.

Not a word about the dance--except a general affirmative to Mrs.
Pendleton's question if he had enjoyed himself. The Pendletons had
not stayed to look on for long, and Jinny had apparently not worn
her bleeding heart upon her sleeve.

But this immunity could not last. He could not hug the protecting
Pendletons to him forever.

Nor did he want to. They waned upon him. Mrs. Pendleton's
conversation was a perpetual, "Do look at--!" or dissertations from
the guide books--already she had imparted a great deal of Flinders
Petrie to him about his tombs. Mr. Pendleton was neither
enthusiastic nor voluble, but he was attacking the objects of their
travels in the same thorough-going spirit that he had attacked and
surmounted the industrial obstacles of his career, and he went to a
great deal of persistent trouble to ascertain the exact dates of
passing mosques and the conformations of their arches.

The travelers had already "done" the Citadel. They had climbed its
rocky hill, they had viewed the Mahomet Ali mosque and its columns
and its carpets and had taken their guide's and their guidebook's
word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly
effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city